Walters Art Museum

The Walters Art Museum has entered into a partnership with the Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum in Hildesheim, Germany, to exchange ideas, staff members and art projects, officials announced Tuesday. "The Walters has partnered in the past with exhibitions at the British Museum and in Hamburg," said Regine Schulz, curator of ancient art and director of international curatorial relations at the Walters. "But to have a cooperative partner is a better thing. You can do exhibits together without huge fees.

For the past 158 years, art historians thought that the painter Richard Caton Woodville, the James Dean of his generation, had completed just 19 paintings before he died of a morphine overdose in 1855 at age 30. Now, we know that there were 20. Joy Heyrman, deputy director of development for the Walters Art Museum, recently learned about what very well may be first oil painting that the artist ever created. It's an 1844 portrait of a childhood friend, the surgeon and investigator Stedman R. Tilghman.

Paintings in museum-quality frames are popping up outdoors around town - displayed on a post just outside the entrance to Baltimore's City Hall and along Patterson Park, mounted to the wall on a corner of the Avenue in Hampden. These high-quality reproductions of vintage pieces from the Walters Art Museum give a new meaning to the concept of art in public places. Within the next few weeks, 20 more works will be unveiled, from Fells Point to Meadowood Regional Park near Green Spring Station.

Six finalists were announced Wednesday for the 2013 Janet & Walter Sondheim Prize - and the prestigious award is edging more toward alternate media than it ever has before. The candidates in the running to win the eighth annual award include two documentary photographers, a video artist, a photographer inspired by anonymous tweets, and two sculptors who specialize in large-scale installation art. There's nary a traditional painter in the bunch. The finalists are: Gabriel Bulisova, a documentary photographer and multimedia artist based in Washington; photographer and video artist Larry Cook of Landover; sculptural installation artist Caitlin Cunningham of Baltimore; Nate Larson, a faculty member of the Maryland Institute, College of Art who photographs the locations of tweets sent by mobile phone; documentary photographer Louie Palu of Baltimore and sculptural installation artist Dan Steinhilber of Washington.

More than 10,000 items in the Walters Art Museum — about a third of the total collection — can now be viewed and downloaded online for free, without copyright restrictions. The museum's collection is "basically public domain," said Dylan Kinnett, manager of web and social media at the Walters. "Something like this would be less likely at a museum with contemporary art, where the artist is still alive or the estate is still active. " The free online accessibility, which complements the Walters' free admission policy, allows viewers to see works spanning several eras, from ancient Egypt and the Americas to 18th- and 19th-century Europe.

In naming Julia Marciari-Alexander as executive director on Wednesday, the Walters Art Museum board of directors entrusted one of Baltimore's most important arts institutions to a rising star — and signaled an emphasis on community engagement even more than on a long history of leading an organization. The Yale-trained Marciari-Alexander, 45, serves as the San Diego Museum of Art's head curator and starts her new post April 1. She will succeed Gary Vikan, who is retiring in June after 27 years at the Walters and who helped the museum become a national leader in rethinking the traditional role of arts institutions.

Gary Vikan, who has been a dynamic force at the helm of the Walters Art Museum for 18 years, will leave the post of director in June 2013, or when his successor is in place. "I really made the decision in November 2008, when I was 62," Vikan said, "but that's when the stock market was plummeting. So I picked 65. " The museum weathered the economic downturn successfully, thanks to Vikan's leadership, said Walters board chairman Douglas Hamilton Jr. "Gary has carried us through the economic downturn," he said.

The sculpture court at the Walters Art Museum is one of Baltimore's most inviting spaces. Acoustically, it's a bit of a soup, but who cares in such an ambience? That point was drive home Sunday evening when An Die Musik Live and the Walters presented the last in this season's series of early music concerts. This one, which drew a spill-over crowd, featured one of the Baltimore Symphony's star players, principal trumpet Andrew Balio, in a bright burst of baroque repertoire.

Ashley Boycher has always considered public museums "magic places. " "Growing up with modest means in rural Louisiana sure will make a kid curious about the world," said Boycher. That curiosity never left her, and she now has been at the Walters for 18 months, designing interiors for all temporary exhibitions and touching up permanent displays. Next month, you can see her handiwork in the exhibition "Public Property. " "We will showcase our visitors' voices and choices more than ever before," she said.

Baltimore's Walters Art Museum has received a $265,000 National Endowment for the Humanities grant to put toward digitizing its collection of medieval manuscripts and making it available, via computer, to the general public. The three-year project, "Imaging the Hours: Creating a Digital Resource of Flemish Manuscripts," includes 113 illustrated manuscripts, encompassing 45,000 pages of text with over 3,000 pages of illumination — elaborate illustrations, such as stylized letters or border decorations.

It's one of the ironies of the art world that major cultural institutions like the Baltimore Museum of Art are home to priceless collections of paintings, sculpture and other works by the world's greatest masters, yet they often struggle to come up with money to fix a leaky roof, pay the electricity bill or hire staff. We'd hesitate to guess the value of the BMA's holdings, but surely the total must reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Yet no museum that valued its reputation could sell off a Picasso or a Matisse every time the basement flooded or a heating and air-conditioning unit failed.

More than five years after a financial crisis ravaged the U.S. economy, the Baltimore Museum of Art has finally run out of options. Museum administrators announced Monday that after exhausting other cost-cutting measures, they have laid off 14 employees, or 9 percent of the 154-member staff. The cuts, which affected 11 full-time and three part-time employees, took effect immediately. The job cuts are needed to make up a projected deficit of more than $500,000 by July 1, according to museum director Doreen Bolger, and to accommodate a budget that is shrinking by $1 million from its current level of $12.9 million for the 2012-2013 fiscal year.

This schedule will be in effect Friday, March 29: Government offices Closed in Anne Arundel and Carroll counties, and in Baltimore City and Annapolis. Open in Baltimore, Frederick, Harford and Howard counties. Courts Open in all jurisdictions. Libraries Closed in Carroll, Harford and Howard counties and Baltimore City. Open in Anne Arundel, Baltimore and Frederick counties. Public schools Closed in all jurisdictions.

The sculpture court at the Walters Art Museum is one of Baltimore's most inviting spaces. Acoustically, it's a bit of a soup, but who cares in such an ambience? That point was drive home Sunday evening when An Die Musik Live and the Walters presented the last in this season's series of early music concerts. This one, which drew a spill-over crowd, featured one of the Baltimore Symphony's star players, principal trumpet Andrew Balio, in a bright burst of baroque repertoire.

In naming Julia Marciari-Alexander as executive director on Wednesday, the Walters Art Museum board of directors entrusted one of Baltimore's most important arts institutions to a rising star — and signaled an emphasis on community engagement even more than on a long history of leading an organization. The Yale-trained Marciari-Alexander, 45, serves as the San Diego Museum of Art's head curator and starts her new post April 1. She will succeed Gary Vikan, who is retiring in June after 27 years at the Walters and who helped the museum become a national leader in rethinking the traditional role of arts institutions.

Mary Alma O'Connor Lears, a former Walters Art Museum volunteer guide whose keen eyes alerted officials to a $1 million theft later linked to a gallery security guard, died of lung disease Jan. 24 at Gilchrist Hospice Care. The Towson and former Roland Park resident was 88. Born Mary Alma O'Connor in Baltimore, she was the daughter of Dr. John A. O'Connor, chief surgeon of the Baltimore Police Department and medical examiner, and Alma Obrecht, a homemaker. Raised in Govans and on Springlake Way in Homeland, she was a 1942 graduate of Notre Dame Preparatory School and was class president all four years.

Jewelry makers Cynthia Alderdice and Lois Mansfield are meticulously forging the past to the present with chains of silver, copper and gold. The pendants and necklaces for sale in their Annapolis shop use such modern-day tools as computers to help them replicate designs and effects that are nearly 2,000 years old. For example, a necklace called "Awakening" features a pendant made from 22-karat gold and featuring cloisonne, a type of enameled...

If you have a small child, you're used to avoiding situations where there's an expectation of quiet. Flying's no fun, the theater's out, and museums are off the list too. But rethink that last one: The Walters Art Museum has a program called Waltee's Cubs for ages through 18 months. On a day when the Walters is typically closed, it opens its doors for babies for engaging learning activities in one of the exhibit areas, then a half-hour of free play and art in the studios. I attended January's "Funny Faces" event with my 1-year-old, Aaron, last week.

Art museums always come in handy during the holidays, when so many people are looking for enjoyable ways to while away the hours with friends and family - or to escape from friends and family. This weekend, consider checking out the Baltimore Museum of Art and Walters Art Museum . Both esteemed venues have much to offer first-time and veteran visitors alike. The big draw at the BMA this season is the newly restored Contemporary Wing, which provides more than enough diversion and elucidation to compensate for those portions of the museum that have recently been closed off for their turn at restoration.